September 22, 2023

"She laid down and used one of the dogs as a pillow, and the other dog laid right next to her and kept her safe."

Said Lt Mark Giannunzio, quoted in "Lost Michigan toddler found asleep in woods using family dog as furry pillow/One dog provided support and another kept watch as two-year-old girl was found three miles from Upper Peninsula home in slumber."

35 comments:

Kevin said...

Thank goodness it wasn't a three dog night.

Aggie said...

We don't deserve dogs.

cassandra lite said...

If the dog watching over her was a rottweiler, the guy who happened on her could've suffered some serious injury.

Mark Chardonnay said...

Just like the Good Dog Carl books!

Oligonicella said...

Doge, overall, are so much better than people.

Jaq said...

Reminds me of the St Bernard in Peter Pan. I might get diabetes from this story, but bring it on.

gilbar said...

Dogs Doing Their Jobs..
Who's a Good Boy?? You ARE!! GOOD DOGGY GOOD DOGGY!

gilbar said...

Aggie said...
We don't deserve dogs.

I think, that dogs OFTEN Wonder; if domesticating humans was worth the trouble..
But, then they think about can openers, and realize that people have their purposes

Rory said...

I adopted my German Shepherd when he was about four. I had no kids to socialize him with, and he didn't especially seem to like kids (would snap at them). But if we were in a park somewhere, and saw an unattended child, he would stop everything until he figured out exactly who that kid belonged to.

PM said...

Dog / God
Coincidence?

Big Mike said...

@Aggie, no we don't.

I am very glad that the news is good and the girl found safe. It doesn't always work out that way.

Joe Smith said...

Good story...happy ending.

Thank God for dogs.

Narr said...

Dogs are the best. Same thing happened to a little boy around here some years ago, but there was only one dog involved.

Yancey Ward said...

Good doggy!!

rcocean said...

What a silly story. How far can a two year old go? half a mile? Nobody in the family called out her name or the dogs? And they didn't respond. Okey dokey.

Anyway, I'm glad the pets stayed with her. But probably would've left her when they got hungry and went back to the house for a bowl of dog food.

The cat of course, just stayed home.

BG said...

Dogs know.
I can’t stand being without one.

BG said...

I should have looked at the photos first. We used to have a half Rottie. I still miss him. He was worth his weight (140 lbs.) in gold.

The Vault Dweller said...

Doggos: "We must protect our little human."

Skipper said...

Great that the dogs took care of the little Yooper, but why didn't they lead her home?

JES said...

I think the dogs would have showed her the way home when she woke up. They are kind of like that.

Quaestor said...

Typical lupine behavior retained by the domesticated descendants.

Lexington Green said...

That’s today’s happy story. Glad to have it.

Good doggies.

Eva Marie said...

Small children and adults behave very differently when they’re lost. Little ones will simply walk and walk until they’re tired. Then they lie down and sleep. You just need to draw a circle around the area a toddler can walk in x hours and then search within that circle. Adults have worry and adrenaline rushes and fear to contend with. That’s where the behavior of walking in circles comes from.

Quaestor said...

RE: gilbar's a joke at 10:30

In the words of Emilio Lizardo/Lord Worfin, the best character in the worst sci-fi comedy ever made, "Laugh alla you want, monkey boy."

Antiquarians, anthropologists, animal behaviorists, and most recently geneticists have been discussing the man/dog relationship for at least two hundred years. Some were impressed by an experiment in fox domestication performed in the Soviet Union by Dmitry K. Belyayev and Lyudmila Tru; others were less impressed regarding its relevance to prehistory. Belyayev and Trut were able to breed a strain of silver foxes with many dog-like characteristics such as floppy ears and submissive licking, however, they were able to achieve this by using cages, bite-proof gloves, and plenty of food and clean water such the captives never needed to hunt nor were they allowed to. Critical peer review pointed out that such means were probably not avail to paleolithic hunter-gatherers and the wolf is in any case a far more formidable animal to control against its will.

Nothing is settled yet and may never be, but the lone wolf hypothesis is gaining adherents. Lone wolves, animals that live without pack associations have been a known phenomenon since ancient times, often as a featured character in folklore, myth, and fable. However, recent studies have revealed how common the lone wolf is in nature. Pack behavior allows a group of five or six adult wolves weighing between 60 and 120 pounds each to overwhelm much larger and dangerous prey such as bison and elk and afterward defend the kill from even more powerful and dangerous beasts such as bears. Lone wolves do not enjoy the advantages of the pack, and consequently do not generally prey on animals larger than themselves. Previously lone wolves were believed to be uncommon and generally doomed to solitary starvation. Recently acquired evidence doesn't completely support that idea. Instead of being forlorn rejects driven by force from the protective fellowship of the pack, lone wolves may be enterprising individuals with greater than average intelligence who leave the pack structure voluntarily to live a lifestyle more like that of a fox or coyote than a pack wolf. Perhaps the more prolific local prey populations are hares or rabbits rather than deer or bison, or perhaps reproductive opportunities are better for the lone wolf than for the same individual as a pack member. There are many possible incentives or circumstances that promote lone-wolf behavior.

The lone wolf hypothesis proposes domestication as voluntary and initiated by the animal and not the human side of the relationship. A lone wolf discovers a group of human hunter-gatherers and begins to exploit opportunities created by their activities, eventually establishing a mutually beneficial relationship. The actual hypothesis is far more detailed than that and deserves your interest because it eliminates the two most decisive objections to human-initiated domestication: 1) By what means? Paleolithic humans lacked the equipment Belyayev and Trut used to isolate and control foxes, small predators with no ability to kill a fit adult human. 2) Why devote years of effort to confine, feed, and control predators competing for the same food supply needed by humans when logic demands their destruction?

Narr said...

Word on the street is that DeSantis kicked the little girl's dogs. And Russell Brand assaulted her.

I don't believe the second one. FJB, now . . .

n.n said...

Like mom and dad, dogs are protective of their young charges.

gilbar said...

Skipper said...
Great that the dogs took care of the little Yooper, but why didn't they lead her home?

i'm pretty confident, that they WOULD HAVE.. In the morning..
It was late at night, their human wanted to sleep.. So they let her sleep.

The next morning, the dogs would have been like: Home's THIS WAY, and there'll be breakfast!

boatbuilder said...

Questor--

It's the best sci-fi comedy ever made (or maybe second to Galaxy Quest), you Philistine ;^), and the line is "Laugh-a-while-you can, monkey boy."

Spiros said...

I think a 3 mile walk is the outer limit for toddlers.

Josephbleau said...

Only in the UP could a child be found in the woods without the subsequent indictment of the parents. The UP is a superior more knowledgeable place.

BUMBLE BEE said...

Belgian Malinois is a very special animal> Watched a trooper water exercise one at a nearby lake. That dog was sharply focused. Not like the black labs I've known.
Was a story a while back about a little girl at local garden party on an estate nearby. She had fallen into a small pond back in the property and the homeowner's Bouvier had her pressed against the steep side by swimming while barking wildly, saving the stranger's life.

Lars Porsena said...

Sweet story. But for every one like this there are ten where the dog mauls or kills the child.

EdwdLny said...

Extra treats ! Lots of extra treats.

BUMBLE BEE said...

I'll add the reminder of the Great Pyrenees vs. the coyote pack threatening the family's sheep.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/casper-sheepdog-kills-8-coyotes-that-attacked-his-flock-farmer-georgia/

Leroy Brown? No Casper!

Paul said...

And if the kid has just two cats with her?